THREATS AND RESPONSES: NORTHERN IRAQ

THREATS AND RESPONSES: NORTHERN IRAQ; For Kurds, Big Menace Is an Incursion by Turks

By DAVID ROHDE

Published: March 7, 2003

ERBIL, Iraq, March 5—
Nasreen Sideek heard the news from her father last Friday. Kurds from her home region are planning to form a human chain to block Turkish soldiers from entering Northern Iraq.

''He said the people of Zakho have decided to stand on the bridge just to stop the tanks,'' she said of the main border crossing. ''If they say this, then I can expect much more.''

As Turkish military officials pushed for Parliament to reconsider whether to let American soldiersenter for a possible attack on Iraq, Kurdish protests intensified against deploying Turkish forces in a limited area of northern Iraq.

Gun shops are doing a brisk trade to young men who say they are buying assault rifles to fight Iraqi soldiers and Turks. Women's groups held a vigil protesting ''Turkish military intervention'' in Iraq.

American and Turkish officials say Kurdish threats and fears are exaggerated, but Kurds are now declaring Turkish soldiers as much of a threat as Saddam Hussein.

In what would be a nightmare for the United States, Kurds could block or even attack Turkish forces if they entered Iraq alongside American units. If fighting erupted between even a few Kurds and Turkish soldiers, it could quickly spiral.

Kurdish opposition to Turkish forces is vehement. Rights groups have accused the Turkish Army of torturing and killing Kurdish civilians and burning thousands of homes in its campaign to crush a Kurdish insurgency in Turkey in the 1990's.

Ms. Sideek, 35, a Harvard graduate, former political prisoner and leading government minister, is an unlikely voice of protest here. She and other Kurdish officials insist that resistance to the Turks be nonviolent. But she says the explanation for it is simple: decades of bitter interactions with the Turkish military. ''They are very arrogant, very misbehaved, very brutal and very cruel,'' Ms. Sideek said.

She says her own life is an example. When she was 21, Turkish soldiers blocked the United Nations from aiding her aunt, uncle and 80,000 other refugees who fled to Turkey after chemical attacks by Iraq. When she was 24, Turkish soldiers blocked her and her three brothers on the border for three days and then gave them no aid after the failed Kurdish uprising that followed the gulf war. When she was 28, Turkish soldiers pursuing Kurdish separatists were allowed to enter northern Iraq and occupy hilltops near her village. Those tanks remain.

''I'm sorry,'' Ms. Sideek said. ''As an Iraqi and as a Kurd, the most destabilizing issue will be Turkey.''

Turkish officials fear that Iraq's Kurds are bent on establishing a united Kurdistan and would make territorial claims on southeastern Turkey. For years, officials in Ankara have accused Kurds in northern Iraq of harboring guerrillas involved in a failed insurgency by the Kurdish Workers' Party, or P.K.K., in southeastern Turkey in the 1990's.

Under the proposed agreement with the United States, Turkish forces would enter northern Iraq to prevent a flood of refugees from entering Turkey as they did after the first gulf war. But the troops would also be in position to block the establishment of a Kurdish state or seize control of the oil-rich cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, cities that Turkey, Iraq and the Kurds claim.

The outcry here reflects the fears of the 3.8 million Kurds here, many of whom have flourished through a decade of American-protected self-rule. Ms. Sideek is a symbol of their success. The only daughter in a family of seven sons, she rose from a refugee to gain a master's degree at Harvard and become minister for reconstruction and development in the western half of Kurdish-controlled Iraq.

Ms. Sideek said she fears the United States will trade away the Kurds' autonomy in its negotiations with Turkey. ''If America needs them as a partner, they should say exactly what their role should be,'' Ms. Sideek said.

During her childhood Ms. Sideek, like many Kurds in northern Iraq, was raised on accounts of Turkey's repression of its 12 million ethnic Kurds. Millions more Kurds live in eastern Syria, northern Iraq and northwestern Iran. All four countries and the United States oppose the creation of a new Kurdish state. Ms. Sideek and other Kurdish leaders in Northern Iraq say they wish to be part of a new democratic Iraq.

She grew up in Baghdad but when she was 14, Ms. Sideek and her family were jailed for two months. One brother became a Kurdish separatist guerrilla in northern Iraq.

The family fled from Baghdad to Dohuk in northeastern Iraq, an hour's drive from their village of Chamsaida. Chemical attacks by Iraqi forces in 1988 sent her aunt and uncle fleeing to Turkey. There, Turkish officials did not classify the Kurds as refugees, blocked assistance from the United Nations and confined the Kurds to camps.

In 1991, after the United States encouraged and then backed away from a Kurdish uprising, Ms. Sideek and three of her brothers fled as Iraqi forces advanced. ''It was the most disastrous and disappointing day in my life,'' she said.

Photo: Nasreen Sideek, 35, minister of reconstruction and development in the autonomous Kurdish zone, met with engineers in her office in Erbil last week. (Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)